


Not Everything's About You

by rin0rourke



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Gen, Identity Reveal
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-07
Updated: 2015-11-07
Packaged: 2018-04-30 13:23:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5165372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rin0rourke/pseuds/rin0rourke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One would think a near death experience and subsequent freakout would hamper even the Star Quarterback's self obsession a little bit, but nooo. The universe just revolves around Dash Baxter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Everything's About You

**Author's Note:**

> I've a weakness for reveal stories that traumatize my big idiot. One day I may actually do a big in depth fic involving much emotion and internal struggle and character growth, make it a big dramatic affair, maybe throw in some coming of age. All very serious.
> 
> At the moment I'm content to simply toss the kids into a big pile of problems and leave them to figure it all out.

"You, you're a ghost." Dash breathed. "Your Da-D-Danny Phantom. Oh man, oh jeeze oh man oh, oh my god this can't be _happening_!"

They were sprawled out on the grassy back lawn of Fenton Works, the remains of an explosive battle scattered about them in a way reminiscent of a time, years ago, when they had been partnered and attacked by Skulker. Danny would find it all very funny, really, if it wasn't so god damned frustrating. He was far, far beyond his limit for patience. In fact he found it a true measure of his growth that he had not knocked the jock unconsious hours ago.

It wasn't even an excusable team-up, there was absolutely zero reasons for Dash _freaking_  Baxter to be caught up in a ghost fight. No one to save, no school assignment to complete, they hadn't even been in the middle of the classic nerd/jock bonding beat down. 

Nooooo Dash, pathetic no training no ghost hunting equipment **human**  Dash, had been walking by Danny's fence while behind the wooden barricade Danny fought an army of ghostly rodents, heard the comotion, and thought " _I'm going to do the stupid thing and **help.**_ "

As if battling off the ecto-tainted corpses of yard pests wasn't hard enough without having to protect some thick headed neanderthal with 'hero worship' and 'fanboy' as his only battle moves. Somewhere between blasting the Roman-armored gophers in their chariots and grabbing the ninja-shrews trying to infiltrate the back door Dash had gotten captured by the savage field mice, Arnold Schwarzenegger in kangaroo-rat form with metal razor talons at the end of it's hind legs ready to turn him to bloody mincemeat. 

Hands up in surrender they were dragged to the hole beneath the shed, no doubt the source of ecto-contaminant, and continued the amazing adventure sub-level where, sometime during the return trip via medieval catapult operated by rebel rabbits dressed in kilts and the skulls of lizards towards the distant light of an annexed molehill, he had gone human, and landed amongst the rubble and rabble as Danny Fenton.

And while Dash had his mild to moderate freakout he was on the phone with the cavalry for damage control. Because he was a good guy, and good guys didn't beat teenagers over the head with shovels and burry them in their ecto-contaminated backyards.

No matter how strong the temptation.

"Yeah hey Sam? Think you can grab Tucker and be over here as quick as you **possibly**  can?" He shifted, leaned away from the jock and brushed dirt from his jeans. "Why? I **really**  need help dealing with Dash, he found out I was D-" he had to pull the phone away, because _eardrums_. Glancing nervously over his shoulder to check on Dash, it didn't look like the blonde was in danger of fainting, just very pale and wide-eyed and, how long was she going to keep screaming at him? "Yes, yes I know, no I didn't **tell**  him! Of course I was careful, someone **else**  wasn't, and it's not like I could let him get **killed**."

A pause.

" **No** I couldn't have!" He always _could_  count on Sam to help him hide a body. "Look he's freaking out. No I mean he's **seriously**  freaking out like, hyperventilating here," and he was, "Dash? Dash breathe slowly, your going to pass out and while it's fun to think you'll assume this is all a dream we need to talk. No Sam I don't want you hurting him. Dash just breath normal," he shoved the quarterback's head between his knees and rubbed circles on his back, swiping at dirt still clinging to the jacket, "concentrate on breathing, that's good. Oh for the love of- Sam gagging him is the _least_  helpful thing right now. Oh, later? No I don't think I have enough closet space for a kidnap slash hostage situation, not long term anyway."

He shifted back to facing Dash as Sam three-wayed Tuck to loop him in, settling on his own knees he kept the jock's head down. This coming on the heels of their little adventure would have to be hell on him, he was probably queasy as well as shit-scared and the shock, Danny knew that kind of paralyzing brain scrambling shock, would make him disoriented for the time being.

He cued back into the conversation between his friends as they discussed solutions. "Guys, guys Walker's prison only works on ghosts. Humans pass right through." He blew his bangs out of his face in frustration, feeling the grit of the sub-level in his hair. "Look just get here please, I'll hold you back from throttling him _then_ , right n **ow**  I need to keep him from going into to shock."

His dearest most kindhearted friends made a colorful suggestion.

" **GUYS**!"

Dash clutched at his arm, startling Danny out of his argument. "You didn't... It wasn't my fault was it?" Danny looked at him much the way he'd been looked at when they'd emerged from the hole and he was minus one black jumpsuit. "You didn't, like, kill yourself because I was picking on you did you?" His face was horribly broken hearted and tracked with drying tears, eyes red and puffy and agitated, and Danny's eyes just got wider and wider and wider.

He set his phone down, breathed deep, and prepared to reassure his years long tormentor. "No Dash, no this wasn't a suicide." He put one hand on the jock's shoulder and pointed at himself with the other. "I'm not, I mean I'm a ghost but I'm not _dead_. It was an accident." He tried to smile reasuringly, but it was tight and twitchy and probably looked as fake as it felt.

"Accident?" A hitching breath and long pause, Danny almost huffed a sigh, but was interupted mid inhale by the next question. "Were you like sick or something? Did I beat you up while you were dying?" and his eyes were that of a nocturnal animal once again, "Oh god I picked on a terminal person!" Dash dissolved into blubbering sobs again and no amount of stuttered explanations could convince the jock he was alive.

Danny scrambled to clutch at some kind of reaction, but the make-me-stupid shock had jumped from blonde to brunette and his mind was frazzling. Every time he deflated a death theory, each more pathetic and tragic than the last (and was he really that much foder for angst? That was very much **not**  the image he wanted to portray) the blonde would ask another insane out of the blue question and Danny was stuttering through his objections yet again.

Worse, somehow in some way worse, they all eventually circled back to how Dash was a horrible person, at fault for everything. The egotist. Danny wanted so very much to grab the overly emotional brute and thoroughly, vividly inform him of how he was very much **not**  the main villain in this story, see how well the jerk dealt with the knowledge of Pariah and Vlad and evil alternate timelines.

But as satisfying as crushing Dash's over inflated sense of worth, he didn't think making his superhero story even **more**  tragic would help.

So he pat the big dumb dope's back and murmered there-theres and wondered when the hell Sam and Tucker getting there.

 


End file.
